Thursday, October 28, 2010

Dinosaur Fossils Part of Longtime Chinese Tonic

When asked how 21st-century Chinese could retain a belief in mythological beasts, Xu countered: "How can so many Americans still disbelieve in evolution?"

U.S. folklore historian Adrienne Mayor said discoveries of fossilized dinosaurs by ancient Chinese might have given birth to the earliest myths of dragons in the East, just as similar findings in Greece gave rise to tales of the Cyclops and Titans. (Related: "Cyclops Myth Spurred by "One-Eyed" Fossils?" [February 5, 2003].)

The ancients collected and displayed huge fossils, said Mayor, who is also a visiting scholar at Stanford University.

"They made up stories about the immense bones. They thought these were the remains of the one-eyed Cyclops, of giants, griffins, monsters, dragons, and mighty heroes of myth."

Mayor also suggested that the sudden appearance of dinosaur fossils following thunderstorms might have been misinterpreted in Chinese antiquity. Heavy rains would wash away soil to expose the bones, which some may have seen as the remains of dragons that had somehow fallen from grace—and been condemned to die a mortal's death on Earth.

For centuries, Chinese farmers have supplied fossil relics to apothecaries, who probably became China's first organizers of primitive dinosaur digs.

A belief in the curative power of fossils has even crossed the continents, she added.

"There are many examples of ingesting dinosaur-bone powder or tea around the world, from antiquity to the present day, from ancient Greece and Rome to Native American tribes," Mayor said.

However, no evidence has been found to suggest dino discoveries led to early dragon mythology, according to Chinese fossil expert Xu.

Well-publicized dinosaur finds across China since the turn of the century have spurred peasants to embark on their own amateur digs in a bid to get rich, he added.

Local government officials in Henan and in other parts of China where fossilized dinosaurs are found have begun warning villagers about criminal penalties for stealing or selling fossils. But it is unclear how effective these campaigns have been.

"The skyrocketing financial value of all high-quality dinosaur fossils [worldwide]" is making clandestine dinosaur digs more and more lucrative, said David Eberth, a scholar at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada.

"All indications point to a mounting and robust illegal trade in dinosaur remains, especially from Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, and Hebei," Eberth said.

Xu said the growing ranks of "peasant-paleontologists" and the illegal excavations are a side effect of China's growth in the area of dinosaur discoveries and research.

James Clark, a paleontology professor at George Washington University, agreed. Clark said China's Jurassic- and Cretaceous-era fossils are now attracting the world's leading paleontologists in a 21st-century "dino rush."